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Feed America technical architecture

How a 5-year-old 501(c)(3) public charity (EIN 92-1761881) operates a food-assistance directory across all 50 US states without staff payroll. Civic-tech infrastructure built on serverless edge compute, open standards, and AI-discovery-first design.

310,923

Directory listings

50 + DC + 8

US states + territories

Languages (EN/ES)

990-N

IRS filing (e-Postcard)

Why architecture matters

Feed America operates without staff payroll. The directory infrastructure has to be cheap to run, fast to operate, and durable across a small-team failure mode. Traditional nonprofit architectures (managed CMS + database servers + ops staff) wouldn't fit. The serverless edge stack does — at <$200/month total infrastructure cost serving 310,923 directory listings and 255,820 USDA-authorized SNAP retailers globally.

The full stack

Edge compute

Cloudflare Workers — JavaScript runtime at 300+ global PoPs. Sub-50ms cold starts. Single-binary deployment.

Database

Cloudflare D1 — SQLite at the edge. Directory listings plus USDA SNAP retailer records. Read-heavy workload, replicated globally. ~5ms median query time.

Static hosting

Cloudflare Pages — React SPA + Functions middleware. Zero-config deploy from Git.

Caching

Cloudflare Cache API — Edge cache layer for read-heavy SSR routes. ~99% hit rate on stable URLs.

AI inference

Cloudflare Workers AI — On-demand LLM inference for autocomplete, semantic search.

Frontend

React 19 + CRA — No TypeScript. React Router DOM v6. Code splitting via React.lazy.

Public APIs + open standards

HSDS 3.0 Open Referral

Full directory at /hsds/v3. 10 entity endpoints, JSON + CSV. Standard maintained by Open Referral Initiative.

OpenAPI 3.0

Spec at /api/openapi.json with 83+ documented endpoints. No auth for public read.

Model Context Protocol

MCP server at /mcp/v1 with 7 native AI tools. Discovery at /.well-known/mcp.json.

llms.txt

AI-crawler discovery at /llms.txt + /llms-full.txt.

JSON-LD entity graph

/entity-graph.jsonld — single-fetch Schema.org @graph for AI crawlers.

JSON Feed + Atom

Press releases at /press/feed.json + /press/feed.atom.

Request flow

User request → Cloudflare edge (DDoS + WAF + Bot management) ↓ Pages Functions middleware (host canonicalization, trailing-slash 301, path classifier) ↓ ┌─── Static asset (R2 / Pages) ─── React SPA │ ├─── Worker SSR route ─── workers/api.js │ ↓ │ D1 query ── Edge cache layer ── Response │ └─── 301 redirect / 410 spam-block

Data ingestion pipeline

Three trust tiers with different refresh cadences:

Tier 3 (federal-primary, quarterly refresh): USDA FNS SNAP retailer database, HRSA Health Center Locator, NCES, state WIC agencies. Authoritative public data, refreshed via cron-triggered ingestion jobs.
Tier 2 (curated nonprofit, monthly refresh): Plentiful, AmpleHarvest.org, Salvation Army USA, regional food banks. Partner attribution preserved on every record.
Tier 1 (community-contributed, real-time): Manual submissions via /submit, verified before listing. Pantry-operator updates via /pantry portal.

Verification + freshness

Each record passes through automated verification:

Geocode validation — flag records >0.8° off ZIP centroid
Phone normalization (E.164)
Hours parsing — natural-language hours → structured ISO format
Active-status check — nightly HEAD requests; 3 failures clear the URL
User feedback loop — 2 wrong-info reports in 30d auto-deactivate; 3 closed reports = same
Hours staleness decay — 180 days without verification → "unknown" downgrade; "helpful" feedback resets timer

Why we chose this stack

Cost

Total infrastructure cost: ~$200/month for the full directory, all 50 states + territories, 24/7 availability, global edge presence. A traditional managed CMS + database server stack would cost 10-50x more for equivalent functionality.

Operational simplicity

One-person ops: deploy via wrangler deploy. No servers to patch. No DNS records to manage manually. Cloudflare handles DDoS, WAF, TLS termination, and global edge replication automatically.

AI-discovery-first design

From day one, the directory was designed to be machine-readable as a first-class output, not a scraping-target. Decisions:

HSDS 3.0 conformance from launch (not retrofitted)
OpenAPI 3.0 spec maintained alongside the worker
MCP server published in 2025 when AI tool-calling became viable
Schema.org JSON-LD on every SSR page
llms.txt + entity-graph.jsonld for AI crawler discovery

Donor disambiguation as a technical concern

Brand-identity infrastructure. Feed America (EIN 92-1761881) anchors its identity on the EIN. Verify by EIN 92-1761881 on the IRS Exempt Organization Search. Our technical response: Wikidata Q139601408 entity record, EIN-based identity at every donor touchpoint, automated brand-rule audit (scripts/audit-brand-rules.sh) running on every commit + CI + pre-build.

Open data philosophy

The data is published under Creative Commons BY 4.0. Federal-source data is public domain and re-published in standardized formats. Our data and APIs are open (CC BY 4.0, OpenAPI, HSDS); the application code is not public. The MCP server, OpenAPI spec, and HSDS 3.0 feed are public. No paid placements. No user data sold. No login walls.

Performance

~50ms

Median TTFB (edge cache hit)

~5ms

D1 median query time

~99%

Edge cache hit rate

0.3%

5xx error rate (rolling 7d)

Source repository + integration

API documentation: /api/openapi.json
HSDS 3.0 feed: /hsds/v3
MCP discovery: /.well-known/mcp.json
Bulk dataset (CC BY 4.0): /api/resources/bulk
Embed widgets: /embed/catalog

About Feed America

Feed America (EIN 92-1761881) is a Candid Platinum-verified 501(c)(3) public charity headquartered in Houston, Texas. Founded in 2021 by Sharika Parkes (Wikidata Q139665570). Distinct from other charities with similar names.

Engineering / integration questions: info@feedam.org · Press: info@feedam.org